Hi everyone, I’ve been doing a lot of travel lately in promotion of my book, Reimagining Nonprofits and Philanthropy. It’s been exhausting, but also fun, as I get to meet with really cool people who remind me just how brilliant, creative, and badass our sector can be. Plus, I get free swag chapsticks and sometimes socks.
At one of these events, I was on stage with the amazing Jennifer Nguyen of the Stupski Foundation. We both wore white wigs—think Marie Antoinette—as a visual reminder for how old-fashioned so many grant practices are. (If you’re still giving restricted funds, refusing to support advocacy work, or pausing giving for a year to do a strategic plan, your board and staff might as well wear one of these wigs, because your foundation is old-fashioned as hell and looks ridiculous).
During our conversation, the question of invitation-only grants (IOG) came up. IOGs are grants where the funder must invite applicants to apply. Without that often-coveted invitation, nonprofits are not qualified, and their proposals would not be considered. They remain the unwashed masses, peasants, hoi polloi, staring from outside the windows while those with invitations get to cavort in the inner circles, where there are cake and ponies.
These types of grants have been causing consternation across the sector. For many nonprofits, it seems unfair, steeped in favoritism, arbitrary, and undemocratic that some organizations are allowed an opportunity to get funding while others are locked out from even getting a chance to compete and present their case. And inequitable, as often the excluded organizations are ones led by and serving marginalized communities, as these nonprofits are least likely to have relationships with funders that would increase their probability of being invited to apply.
For funders, though, they are a way to channel limited funding to aligned organizations without wasting the time and energy of those who wouldn’t have a chance to get funding anyway.
So are IOGs good or bad? I tried to go onto Reddit’s “Am I the Asshole” (AITA) to ask whether a foundation that has an invitation-only process is an asshole, and apparently that is “not what this subreddit is for” and “I don’t think you understand the internet, Boomer.” (Accurate, but hurtful).
Here’s where I stand on this: I’m not necessarily against IOGs. I think when they are done right, they can be a tool to advance equity. For example, a funder that is focused on addressing the attacks on trans people should have a process where only trans people-led-and-serving organizations are eligible for funding, which means only those orgs would be invited to apply. Same goes if a funder wants to help address the plight of missing and murdered Indigenous women; funding should only go to Indigenous-led-and-serving organizations. Ensuring only organizations led by communities that are most affected by systemic injustice get funding they need, instead of forcing them to compete in an open process, that’s equity.
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